Sun Chief Calls Out IBM, Demands Compatibility

downbad writes "Sun's President, Jonathan Schwartz, yesterday published an Open Letter to the CEO of IBM, Sam Palmisano, in which he alluded to "behavior reminiscent of an IBM history many CIOs would like to forget" - a reference to Sun's frustration that IBM isn't supporting Solaris 10 with WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, Rational and MQSeries products. In his "Dear Sam" letter - circulated via his blog - Schwartz refers first to the "long history of partnering" between Sun and IBM, and claims Sun customers have made repeated calls to IBM about having the choice to run IBM products on Solaris 10." *cough* Kettle, meet Pot.

Comments

Slightly Off Topic

[blackmonday]

At this point, it makes more sense for IBM to port their applications to OS X. Now that they supply the CPU for Apple's server hardware, there's a strong case to be made for this.

If WSAD were ever ported to OS X, my boss would be placing a nice order for xServes and powermacs on the Apple website.

Re:Slightly Off Topic

[greed]

In 1993, IBM provided the compilers for Apple's new hardware. For a while, Apple Workgroup Servers were merely RS/6000s running AIX with an Apple logo on the front panel.

Rumor has it, at one point IBM was going to port their XL C++ (C Set ++ by then) compiler to Mac OS. (That was, of course, way before OS X, so it would be a massive user interface and library effort--the actual code gen for PowerPC 604 was already complete, for the RS/6000s.)

So, yeah, IBM and Apple have been surprisingly close for a while now. With BSD and X11, I don't know why they don't do a quick build of a lot of their apps--instantly add a new target market. Sure, Cocoa is nicer, but X11 is there and it works and you'll be done.

Of course, I do know from experience that IBM is very reluctant to do a "90%" solution--one that works for 90% of the target customers. They'll kill themselves trying to get that last 10% of function, and spend so much time at it that the 90% has gone to some other vendor, the market has changed, and now no-one cares.

IBM is a "service" company, right?

[Speare]

IBM is trying to be a "service" company. That means that, if you pay them enough, they'll support CheeseWiz(tm) on Solaris 10. Not too likely that Sun will pay IBM enough to get industry-wide support, but many little companies might strike up a contract if they saw it as worthwhile.

Of course, IBM still has strong roots as a "hardware" company. What's IBM's incentive to rewrite their software (little profit) on Sun's hardware (no profit)? Not a whole lot of incentive there.

Translation:

[Garg]

"My OS is becoming irrelevant! Lots more stuff runs on Linux! Save me, IBM!!!"

Seriously, IBM will port their software if they can make more money selling the Solaris versions than it cost to port and support. That's it.

IBM may show largesse toward open source, but that's because they view it as strategic. Solaris isn't strategic for them, no matter how much Schwartz may wish it so.

Garg